


Seen and Unseen

by Molly_Hats



Series: Batfam Week 2018 [1]
Category: Batgirl (Comics), Batman (Comics), Robin (Comics)
Genre: Batfam Week 2018, Bonding, But not above destroying Tim's immaculately gelled hair, Cassandra Cain Is a Good Sister, Early Cassandra Cain Batgirl era, Early Tim Drake Robin era, Faceblind Tim Drake, Gen, Minor Injuries, Minor Violence, Prosopagnosia, description
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-15 03:23:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15403869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Molly_Hats/pseuds/Molly_Hats
Summary: Day One: Vacation orSeparationIn which the separation between Tim and his second family is metaphorical, and Cassandra helps narrow the gap.





	Seen and Unseen

Tim had a secret, one Bruce may have discovered but never vocalized. He still struggled to recognize them all, Dick and Bruce and Cassandra. He compensated well, but he still prefered seeing them in their uniforms, where he knew immediately and without doubt who they were. There was an irony in that, that he identified people best when their identities were hidden. 

Mom and Dad never had any patience for his “shyness,” insisting that he was embarrassing himself and them with his “immature behavior.” So he learned his way around a conversation, how to greet and suck up to someone without ever knowing their name. It was easy at galas since he generally stuck close to his parents and learned to pick up on their cues for how close to him these people were supposed to be. 

Unfortunately, this time Tim lost all three of the people he came in with a few minutes into the gala. He scanned the crowd from the snack table, listening to the chatter of the group to try and pick out a familiar voice. He tried to call them to mind, if not their faces, then their voices, their body language, their hair. 

Dick was a little shorter than Bruce, average height next to most people. His voice was a bit higher than Bruce’s with a hint of a lisp. It had been stronger when he was younger, Tim knew from interviews. He was tall and lean, with a way of walking where he bobbed on his feet if he wasn’t dead on them. Tim adored the mullet--it made him easy to distinguish in a crowd of black-haired, white-passing men in suits. 

Tim relied more on body language for Bruce, at least at social events where he was “Brucie.” “Brucie” filled whatever space he was in, not by causing dread or annexing the shadows like Batman, but by actively swinging his voice and his body through it. His hands were always open, his mouth pulled wide in a smile or a speech. The only hint of Batman in his voice was how it grated on his “ah”s, how it scraped tonelessly from his throat if his sentence dragged too long. Batman was sharp edges and outlines blending into the darkness, but Brucie was open, smooth gestures and clear spaces. Somewhere in the middle was Bruce. Tim could spend the rest of his life trying to figure out where. 

Cassandra was the easiest for him to distinguish, but the hardest to find. Girls were always easier to tell apart, because of the hair and, in settings like this, wider variety in formalwear. He quickly called to mind what she was wearing when they prepared earlier: simple crossed pins to keep her hair out of her eyes, a black dress with a wide, layered skirt, black flats. That said, she didn’t talk much, so he didn’t know her voice very well, and she was his height, so he didn’t have much chance of spotting her in the forest of people.

Tim craned his neck, searching for any of them, but he was lost in a crowd of black-suited torsos. He finally gave up and pulled away from the snack table, strolling casually over to a pillar and ducking behind it. He doubted that it hid him completely, but trusted that no one would be too interested in investigating the unidentified short guy when there were actual important people with whom to schmooze.

One of them would seek him out when it was time to go, probably. Or he could stick it out for an hour and then go on patrol. Or they might leave him behind, and he’d be none the wiser until the crowd thinned out so much he’d be able to tell that they ditched him, and then they’d say that they thought he’d notice, ask why he hadn’t noticed, why wouldn’t he notice, he was supposed to be the world’s third greatest detective, he wasn’t fit to be Robin--

A hand landed on his arm, and he jumped. “Sheesh, you startled me.” He looked over and saw a black-haired girl in a black dress with a layered skirt. He took an educated barely-guess. “Sorry, Cass, I--”

She shook her head, shushing him, and pointed across the room. He followed her finger just in time to see one of Bruce’s sweeping hand gestures smack someone in the face. Bruce burst into a flurry of apologies, but Tim had his suspicions about how genuine they were. 

Cass pointed again, her hand crossing his line of sight and guiding it in another direction. Dick was laughing at something, and a shift in the crowd let Tim briefly see Barbara Gordon, likely the source of the hilarity, beside him. 

Cass turned back to him, a question in her raised eyebrow. 

“Uh...thanks,” Tim stammered.

She nodded.

“Please don’t tell them.”

“What?”

“I know it sounds bad, but just don’t tell about…” he roughly circled the air around his own face with a clawed hand, struggling to articulate it. He frowned in frustration. Even now, he still didn’t know how to describe it. It was probably some rule, somewhere, how deviation was impossible to define in the absence of a standard. Or something. 

She smiled now. “Tell them what?”

“Tell them that--” He cut off and slowly cracked a smile, too. “Thanks.”

She patted his head, managing to ruffle his hair despite how it should have been cemented into flatness by his overzealous hair gel application.

“Hey!” He protested, grabbing at her hand. 

She laughed and ducked away around the pillar. 

Tim lunged after her, catching one last glimpse of her as she disappeared into the crowd. 

“Tim? What happened to your hair?”

Tim whipped around, recognizing Bruce’s voice. He reached up and felt at his hair, his fingers catching several glued-together clumps that came loose from the whole. Behind Bruce, a face peeked out from the crowd, accompanied by a waving hand. Almost definitely Cass, judging by height and context.

“I think my hair is more talented than I am,” Tim said with a shrug. “Maybe it escaped from Mr. Miracle.” 

Bruce rolled his eyes, moving closer to Tim and trying to tuck the errant strands back in. Certain Bruce couldn’t see from his angle, Tim winked at Cass.

Bruce stepped back to survey his handiwork and frowned. It was less severe than his frowns in the cowl, a cartoonish look of confuzzlement that verged on soft frustration. 

“Maybe it did,” Bruce said finally. He shrugged and patted Tim once on the shoulder. “Run along now.”

Tim looked up at him, searching his face for clues. “Run along?”

Bruce winked. “Take Cass. She’s been dying to get out of here since an hour before it started.”

“Yes, sir!” Tim said delightedly, filled with new energy. He plunged into the place in the crowd where he last saw Cass. 

He looked around, unable to find Cass or any other short, black-haired, black-dressed girl he could have confused for her. “Cass? Come on, you can’t have gone that far. I mean, you probably could, but...”

Someone tapped his shoulder, and he whipped around.

“Going?” Cass asked.

He nodded. He was starting to get a handle on her voice, and thus knew her immediately.

She took his hand. “Show you out.”

He followed her, amazed at how easily and gracefully she slipped through the crowd without needing to apologize once. She was like a needle, dragging him behind her like a thread as she darted easily and smoothly between couples and clusters and loners.

* * *

Batgirl and Robin moved across the rooftops, Batgirl at the front. Tim followed in her footsteps, watching her with growing admiration.

Her movements were similar to Nightwing’s in their easy agility, but while Nightwing tended to bounce around, she was smooth, each action flowing into the next. She was a shadow, a river, a ghost, something he couldn’t adequately describe. Tim wondered if Batman was jealous of the way she moved. He had to be, at least a little.

She stopped and turned her head back to him. Tim drew closer and stopped by her side, looking down at the street below.

Four ski-masked figures stood around the broken windows to a store. Cassandra held up a hand to signal him to wait. She pointed to herself, then to the people on the ground. She covered her face in a peekaboo gesture, then pointed to him.

“I'm on backup?" he whispered.

She nodded, and Tim thought he saw the part of her mask around her mouth shifting. Maybe she was smiling.

Cassandra hopped off of the roof, spreading her cape as she did so. The first figure was caught by surprise, downed with one hit. His buddy managed a small yelp before he, too, hit the ground. Number three was either ready or lucky: he pulled a gun on her and fired. Cassandra easily dodged and charged him. Number four put up more resistance, landing a hit. Cassandra wheeled on him.

A small glint of light behind the store wall distracted Tim, and he squinted at it, thinking it might just be more glass. He quickly realized otherwise: number five was hiding there, in the shattered glass from the broken window. Cassandra’s back was to him, and he was nearly impossible to see, literally impossible from Cassandra’s angle. He raised his gun, ready to fire. 

A roberang sliced through the air and knocked the gun out of his hand. He screamed in surprise, warning his remaining buddies that “Robin’s here!" 

A moment later, Tim swung through the window, kicking the man in the throat. He landed on top of him, but didn’t stay there long. He tried to dive away, but in the enclosed space Five managed to snag his leg and pull him down onto the floor, a shard of glass slicing into his chin. Before Tim could recover, Five's hands were around his throat, pressing him into the ground face down. Tim scrambled for another piece of shattered window to stab his attacker with, black dots starting to swarm his vision. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Tim thought he saw one of the shadows cast by the streetlamps moving, not like Five or his buddies. The man abruptly fell limp on top of Tim, knocking what little air he still had out of him. Tim gasped futilely, breathing in ground glass.

(Glass was made of sand. Was glass ground down into fine grit sand, too? Did it change in some fundamental way? Did glass hold glass funerals where they said "sand you are, and to sand you shall return?") 

His bizarre, startled thoughts only lasted a second before Cassandra was beside him, hauling the unconscious man off of him. “You okay?” 

Tim scrambled out from underneath the unconscious crook. He took several deep breaths. “Fine.” 

“Call police,” she ordered.

Tim nodded, rubbing at his neck. He hoped it wouldn’t bruise--it was too warm for turtlenecks, and the last thing he needed was another child abuse investigation. He felt the cut on his chin--shoot, there was crap in it. He'd need to clean it somehow before he could slap a bandaid on it. He grabbed one of the burner phones they kept for this purpose and entered the number from memory. 

“Commissioner Gordon.”

“Commissioner, it’s Robin. Verification code: Chiroptera. We’ve got a break-in at a 7/11 in Brideshead, on Bruzenak Street. Five guys.” Tim resisted the urge to reference the burger chain.

“I’ll send someone. Thank you.” The commissioner hung up.

“Thank you,” Cassandra said as she finished tying up one of the still-conscious men.

“For what? You did everything, I just almost got myself killed,” Tim said. 

Cassandra stood up from her crouch and held up her hand in a “phone” gesture. “For the call.”

“Oh. You’re welcome.” Tim said awkwardly. “Thank you for saving my life.”

“My job.”

“I should’ve been more careful.”

Cassandra shook her head and patted him on the back. “Did good.”

* * *

They sat on a rooftop ledge after patrol, staring out over the city. They'd cleaned up, or rather, Tim had, sticking a large bandage on his cut chin to hold it over until they got home. It stung, literally and figuratively. Today’s performance had served to show that his fighting skills clearly weren’t going to make up for any lapses in facial recognition. Maybe he was too much of a liability. Maybe he should quit while he was ahead. What if he didn’t recognize a criminal, or thought another person was the guy he was after, and someone got away? His stomach twisted. 

“Batgirl...about what I said earlier. You don’t have to keep the secret. Maybe I should tell them. Maybe I should quit. Maybe I’m not...” His eyes started to water, and he was absolutely furious with himself. More proof he was not a worthy bat. “I’m sorry.”

Cass placed a hand on his shoulder. “You...don’t have to.” She made the same face-circling gesture he did earlier. “You don’t have to.”

“But…” Tim envied her way with words. Whenever he tried to be more laconic, he felt like he failed to convey his meaning. Sometimes he felt like words were the only thing he was good at.

Cass placed a hand on her temple, then her lips. “See. Don’t talk.” She pressed the same hand to Tim’s temple. “Don’t see.” She smiled through the mask, shrugged, and lowered her hand. “Okay.”

“No, it’s not okay!” Tim found himself saying. He wanted so desperately to agree with her, but he knew if he didn’t argue the other side, he’d never be satisfied. “I don’t know any of them. Not Bruce, not Dick, not even you.”

She nodded. “I know.”

Tim deflated. “You knew the second time we met.”

She nodded. “Thought...it was the mask.” She gestured like she was pulling her mask over and off of her head.

“Right words,” Tim said, feeling awkward and patronizing.

“I know,” Cass said confidently.

“Sorry.”

“Okay.” She continued with the previous topic. “You notice. Saw Batman and Robin.” She made the face-circling gesture again. “ _Saw_ Batman and Robin.”

“What use is that if I can’t tell them from some random person out of costume?” Tim almost whined. "What use is that if I get a face full of glass from some random two-bit who can't even break into a 7/11 without four guys as backup."

“See things. See....” Her brow furrowed, and she shook her head. “ _Saw_ the man. I didn’t.” She made a finger gun and “fired” it at herself, slumping backward. “Good for a,” she shaped the word with her lips before saying it, “de-tect-ive.”

Tim froze. A detective. That's what he'd wanted to be. That's what he had admired about Sherlock Holmes, about Batman, even after he had realized just how much time the World's Greatest Detective spent just scaring or punching evildoers. What he had become to find out who Batman and Robin were, had gotten him hired as Robin despite his lack of experience as an acrobat or fighter. 

And Cassandra had seen that, recognized it. A sudden gratitude flooded through him. “Thank you,” he said, the words feeling inadequate next to hers. 

“You’re welcome,” she said fondly, reaching out to touch his hair again. Tim threw his hands up to stop her. She froze, amused. 

“Please...don’t.” He said. “I'm enough of a mess right now.”

He could hear the grin in her voice, even if he couldn’t see it through the mask. “I won’t. Today.” Her hand lowered to his shoulder, and she pulled him closer while scooting closer herself. 

Tim groaned, but he didn’t bother to suppress a hint of a smile as he returned the side-hug. His problems might have separated him from his friends and allies in some ways, but Cass was right. He wouldn’t have been half as observant if he hadn’t had to be, and that was a good skill for a Robin to have. Heck, he might never have found the Bats in the first place if he hadn’t learned to rely on the details.

Beside him, Cassandra swung her legs and hummed some song he didn’t know. He wanted to join in, but he was content for now to simply sit, satisfied with a job well done with the skills they had.

**Author's Note:**

> This work brought to you by TFW you can't tell apart Agent Carter and Emily from Powerless, but you _can_ recognize Madeline Wuntch's voice from Mystery of the Batwoman.
> 
> This originally took place after Batgirl #18, and I was really proud because I had a time frame on it. I didn't actually keep tabs on what Tim was up to at the time, though, so his emotions and insecurities are pretty early-Robin when he was actually a decently well-established hero. In addition, Cass literally _just_ got the possibility of a secret identity reinstated, so I doubt she'd be at these galas already. Honestly, my attempts at timelines just make the whole endeavor more of a mess lmao.
> 
> I adore these two and their relationship so much. It's rarely explored, but it's so casual. They trust each other even when they're struggling with the rest of the family. Also, I always forget that in preboot continuity Cass was the older one. (I suspect the writers did, too). As always, I'm not confident writing Cass--she's fun to write for, but hard. Tim's easy to write, but to a degree that I often worry it's getting boring. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Hope you enjoyed! I'll be here all week. Tip your waitress.


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